Monday, August 22, 2011

lavender honey ice cream

I've been wanting to make lavender ice cream for a while now, but I was never able to find edible lavender at any stores. Until... we were recently on a road trip in Oregon, and we found a beautiful lavender farm!

We met Deborah, owner of the Applegate Valley Lavender Farm, who was kind enough to let us take a look even though they weren't open for tours that day! She showed us around, explained the different types of lavender and how to grow and take care of them, and let us pick a huge bunch for only $5! We talked about baking with lavender, bought a variety of lavender products, and took some pictures at the lovely farm.

I excitedly brought my lavender home from the trip, and dried the flowers according to Deborah's instructions - tied in bunches and hung upside down in a dark room (to preserve the vivid color of the lavender). After they had dried for a week or so, I hand-plucked all the buds from the stems, and stored them in glass jars.

And then, I could finally make lavender ice cream! Once again I used a recipe from David Lebovitz's"The Perfect Scoop". The recipe calls for infusing lavender into honey for an hour or so, then adding that (strained) honey to the ice cream base. It also called for adding more lavender into the custard at this point and letting that infuse in the fridge before churning, but when I tasted it at this point I thought it already had enough lavender flavor, so I skipped that last step.

I loved the resulting ice cream - it was creamy, refreshing, and reminded me of being at the spa. My husband, on the other hand, commented that the ice cream reminded him of soap! Oh well, that just means there's more for me! :)

@Lindsey@Lindselicious - yes, the lavender farm was my favorite part of our trip to oregon! :)

@Bites of Sweetness - you should definitely try it! very refreshing!

@Hester @ Alchemy in the Kitchen - thank you!

@kita - ohhhh you should definitely use your homegrown lavender! i am going to try planting the seeds that came off my oregon lavender!

@Janie - very true regarding lavender being an acquired taste. or maybe its just a feminine taste - all the girls (3 of them) that tried it loved it, but all the boys (3 of them) that tried it thought of soap!

I love baking with lavender! It's so tricky though... if you don't have enough, you don't really taste it. But if you put just a tad too much whatever you're making will remind you of bath soap. We were fooling around at my restaurant before service and made lavender panna cotta... it was delish!

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